Playwright-director Rick Pagano's new two-character play
Women with Dogs explores the ups and downs of an intimate
relationship. (A third character, the four-footed Bruno, is authentically cast
as the dog.) Single white female Marcia is walking him somewhere in Brooklyn
when policeman Ralph wants to write her up for not scooping the poop. What
follows spins into a love affair that spans some considerable time, told in
short scenes, each with emotional twists and turns.

Georja and Gerald had a lively conversation about the play
all the way home in the car, then we had a phone interview with the playwright.
What follows here recaps what we said to each other, then Mr. Pagano joins in.

Georja: The play sparkles for me with wit and
insights--recognizable scenarios that can occur between men and women. They can
be polar opposites on so many levels.

Gerald: L.A. theater often looks like tryouts for the big or
small screens. In this case, the material might be the stuff of romantic
comedy, but I was pleased to see it go deeper. And yet it didn’t go all
Edward-Albee bitter, thankfully.

Georja: Putting down Edward Albee, are we?

Gerald: I think you'll agree, the relationship came off as
very real--not stagey and not sitcom TV.

Dog Bruno steals his scenes, even seems to noise off on cue (Photo courtesy Girlvision).

Georja: When we first meet Marcia and Ralph, she loses
several points with me for not picking up after her dog! Ralph the cop, on the
other hand, is totally charming, likable, and reasonable. He (actor
Joe Nieves)
was so funny with his Brooklyn sayings--for example, "fugazi
intellectuals," speaking of her friends. (I also loved the dog--he grunted
right on cue when Ralph first kisses Marcia.

Gerald: She (actress
Danielle James) is an arty Ivy-League
type. You certainly wouldn't think they'd click. Of course, they do--and they
don't.

Georja: She is idealistic, pessimistic, emotional. And
through all that, she still manages to be charming and funny a lot of the time.
He's earthy, optimistic, fun-loving. He comes on strong, as though he's a
hundred percent, even though we find out later he's holding back.

Gerald: How like a man. So you're saying the stereotypes
actually reinforced the theme?

Georja: Absolutely. It enabled the characters to be
authentic in their differences. Even though Marcia could be harsh and critical,
I could see it was coming from a deep well of frustration.

Gerald: Well, well. When she used having to go home to walk
her dog as an excuse to avoid sleeping with Ralph, obviously he was the one who
was frustrated.

Georja: They both were. I want to make a point that the two
actors were very special. Danielle James and Joe Nieves are wonderfully cast.

Playwright-director Rick Pagano (Photo courtesy Girlvision).

At this point, Rick (the playwright-director) joins us.

Rick: I wanted to write a play that was very different than
the other work I’ve done. I was interested in exploring relationships. This was
my first two-character play. I also wanted to write a play in which the
language was not as important as the silences between the lines, what happens
between people--not verbally--so I could let the actors take over with the help
of me, the director. In any given night the performance can change radically
depending on how much subtext the actors bring to it. It can be very different.
Relationships have to go up and down, and it’s a little like a rollercoaster
ride. I didn’t want to create a traditional arc.

You'd think these two wouldn't click. They do and they don't (Photo courtesy Girlvision).

Georja: Conflicts were there from the beginning, and they
never really went away, although the relationships got deeper.

Rick: Yes, thank you for seeing that. Not everyone sees
that.

Gerald: I’m wondering how Rick got a microphone into our
house!

Rick: You’re not the first person to say that. Several
people have commented on this.

He's a cop pounding a beat and she's a career type with a fluffy dog (Photo courtesy Girlvision).

Georja: The "deciding the restaurant" scene in
particular--that scene has got to be universal in any relationship. I would bet
on it. And I used to live in Brooklyn, and you really nailed that guy.

Rick: My cousins are a lot like that guy. I have friends
like that guy and there’s a part of me obviously in it or I wouldn’t have
written it.

Gerald: Ralph is welded to the idea that he belongs in
Brooklyn, isn't he?

Rick: There's an issue of pride in Brooklyn because he's a
little insecure about his roots whenever he’s in an environment where people
are a little wealthier or more educated. It’s part of the upscale 'Yuppieville'
where she would feel more comfortable and he wouldn’t. There’s a complexity
there.

Georja: I was impressed with the depth of the characters.

Rick: Harold Clurman [founder of the Group Theater] always
talked about the opposite. For me there was a great secret in that--when I
learned about the opposite, in that human beings are filled with
contradictions. And if you can create characters with contradictions you can
get to the complexity of who they really are.

Georja: Not to spoil anything, but the ending scene is
somewhat open to interpretation.

Rick: I like having an ending in which ironically the text
is more subtle than things that were said before and yet the subtext is so much
stronger.

Georja and Gerald agree, this play make you laugh and it
will make you talk about your relationships.

Women with Dogs is Rick Pagano's ninth play, as
writer-director. His company Pagano-Manwiller has cast more than seventy
feature films, including "Say Anything, Hotel Rwanda," and
"Drugstore Cowboy." They also cast such TV hits as "24,"
"Picket Fences," and "Chicago Hope," winning two Emmys.
Besides doing his own plays, he's cast shows on Broadway, as well as at
Lincoln Center and the Mark Taper Forum.

Women with Dogs opened October 4 and will run
for five weeks, closing on Sunday, November 2. Performances are at 8 p.m. on
Fridays and Saturdays, at 7 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $20. Box office phone:
323 960-5773